The US has agreed to release Alexander Vinnik, a Russian national accused of being a cybercrime kingpin, as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia that freed Marc Fogel, an.official said on Wednesday (Feb 12).

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Vinnik operated BTC-e, once one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. He was arrested in 2017 in a small beachside village in northern Greece and detained at Washington's request on suspicion of laundering $4 billion through the exchange.

The prisoner swap marks a rare diplomatic breakthrough between the two nations.

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US authorities linked Vinnik to failure of Mt. Gox

US authorities alleged that Alexander Vinnik was involved in the infamous 2014 hack of Mt. Gox, a Japanese Bitcoin exchange that ultimately went bankrupt. According to the Justice Department, Vinnik acquired funds stolen from Mt. Gox and then laundered them through his own cryptocurrency exchanges, BTC-e and Tradehill, based in San Francisco.

Vinnik was initially extradited to France and later to the US, where he pleaded guilty in May 2024 to conspiracy to commit money laundering.

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BTC-e facilitated over $9bn in transactions in 2011-2017

Vinnik was facing up to 20 years in prison. According to the court records, he was set to be sentenced in January but a US federal judge in November agreed to postpone the sentencing until June, in a brief order that did not cite the reason for the delay.

The US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California revealed that BTC-e, operated by Alexander Vinnik, facilitated over $9 billion in transactions between 2011 and 2017, catering to more than a million users worldwide, including many in the United States, before being dismantled following Vinnik's arrest.

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"BTC-e was one of the primary ways by which cyber criminals around the world transferred, laundered, and stored the criminal proceeds of their illegal activities," the attorney's office said last year.

It added that the exchange received criminal proceeds from numerous hacking incidents, ransomware attacks, identity theft schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics rings, and Vinnik ran it "with the intent to promote these unlawful activities".

Court records indicate that US District Judge Susan Illston arranged a Tuesday afternoon status conference regarding Vinnik's case, though the meeting's specifics remain undisclosed.

(With inputs from agencies)